Imprisoned
by jimlock
Summary: In the facility, life is simple. It's full of pain and humiliation, but there is a perfect routine to it that provides Ada with a strange sense of security. Now she's out in the real world, surrounded by people with questionable morals and a Consulting Criminal desperate to reclaim his property.
1. Chapter 1

John's PTSD-induced nightmares woke him up at 5:00am again. After months of these dreams they were still understandably unpleasant, but now they had become routine, so he dragged himself out of bed and began his morning ritual hour an half earlier than he would have liked.

At this time of the morning the flat was pitch black and silent because Sherlock, for once, was actually _asleep_ , draped across the sofa and clutching his violin across his steadily rising and falling chest.

By the time John had finished making pancakes and a jug full of almost disgustingly strong coffee, Sherlock woke up so abruptly that he fell off the sofa, only just reacting fast enough to rescue his violin. Had he not thrown it onto the armchair in front of him fast enough, it would have ended up straight underneath him as he fell so ungracefully on the floor. Just as he landed, he jumped up equally as quickly, straightening out his rumpled silk dressing gown with as much dignity as he could muster. "Ah, John. Good Morning." He greeted

"Good morning, Sherlock," John replied as he made his way back across to his designated arm chair with his breakfast.

"John, I believe you asked me to remind you of something last night, but I can't seem to remember what it was." The spaced out detective replied. He was still standing in the same place, staring dazedly around the room as he recovered from the shock of having more than three hours of sleep.

"Don't worry about it, I don't remember either. Tell me if it comes back to you."

Sherlock collapsed back onto the sofa with just as much grace as he had had when he first left it, and there he remained for about ten seconds, staring up at the ceiling, before he leaped up again at a speed which would have made anyone (except for John, who was used to Sherlock's odd behaviour) jump. John looked up at him from his breakfast.

"THE BINS!" Sherlock shouted, so abruptly that his flatmate spilled his coffee down himself.

"Mrs Hudson asked us to put them out while she wasn't here. You told me to remind you because you didn't see the point in even trying to get me to do it. You were right for once, John." His voice trailed off slightly on the last sentence and he promptly fell back onto the sofa, sleeping once more.

This sudden need for sleep was not unusual for Sherlock. While usually he could survive on three or four hours of rest, every so often (usually between cases), he would enter something which John affectionately referred to as his 'hibernation period'. This usually consisted of an entire day of heavy, continuous sleep, after which he would return to his regular – yet unhealthy – sleep schedule. Everybody found relief during these hibernation days. John could attempt to clean the flat if he wasn't working, Molly could attend to her cadavers in peace, and Lestrade enjoyed a break from the consulting detective's harassment.

 _Ah. The bins._ John thought to himself. _I should probably sort them before I forget._

With his dressing gown wrapped tightly around him, he stepped outside the block of flats and into the courtyard behind them, only to be immediately attacked by the bitter mid-winter air and heavy snow, which had already begun to settle and was still falling heavily. It was any child's winter dream. Arms wrapped tightly around himself, John made his way across the wintry courtyard and attempted to find the bins and be able to differentiate the colours in the dim, early dawn light. It occurred to him at this point that he was going to have to take the bins round to the front of the flats, and he was wearing only his boxers, an old grey t-shirt, a dressing grown, some worn out slippers and his bed head. He could only hope that the usual gaggle of fans and paparazzi had decided to postpone their visits until the wintry weather had passed. The fact that it was so early in the morning no longer made any difference now that Sherlock had become so famous, which was a fact John had to deal with regularly when he left the flat for work. He made his way with the bins towards the path which he was hoping would lead round to the front of the flats. In the dim light, with the lining of tall trees surrounding the place and only one streetlamp, which had yet to be converted to LED, standing in the furthest corner of the courtyard, the path looked decidedly eerie, particularly, John found, when a figure seemed to appear out of nowhere at the end of it. This figure broke the tense 3 second silence when it began a fit of loud, heaving coughs and promptly collapsed, unconscious, into the snow.

 _3 days earlier._

"Hello Ada."

The man had come to visit her again. He did so once a year- always on her birthday, and as soon as she was capable of conversation, every visit had been the same: he would arrive to the room just after she did; wearing one of his finely tailored suits and attempting a polite, understanding smile which Ada knew was in no way an accurate representation of what he was actually thinking. Even after all these years she still knew nothing about this mysterious man, and though it may have been his sixteenth visit, Ada still had yet to know his name, or even why he chose to see her in the first place. She was the only person in the compound he came to speak to and no one else had ever received any other visitor.

"So, how are you?" He asked, politely.

"I'm okay." She replied. There was a slightly awkward pause before she continued.

"Er- I was wondering, I mean, I know I ask you this every time, but how long do I have left before I can finally, actually, leave this place? Every time you visit you tell me that I need to wait until I get older, but I read somewhere that you can live on your own when you're sixteen."

The man sighed. Every year her pleading became more and more desperate and he knew this was inevitable. "I'm sorry Ada, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but what happens to you is out of my hands. I am merely a friendly visitor."

"So you lied to me to shut me up? Do you even know what it's like here?"

"Look, Ada-"He interjected.

"No! Throughout my whole life, none of have actually known why we're here. We're educated, yes, but when we're not doing that, they're torturing and experimenting on us. You are the only adult with whom I have ever had a normal conversation without being beaten or shouted at. For all I know, you could be my only way out of here and yet you lied to me for years then you call yourself a 'friendly visitor' as though you're free from blame!" Ada ranted loudly, shocked at herself for raising her voice. Usually that would be punished. Harshly.

"Plus, you've never even told me your name." She added.

He remained silent for a minute, watching the teenager in front of him thoughtfully while she sat sullenly with her arms crossed. It occurred to him, for some reason, how much she had changed in a year. From age eleven to fifteen her growth and change had been fast, but steady and even. Now, in the past year, she had changed drastically. That little bit of life she had left she had left was gone, and she was so thin that she was most definitely underweight. The uniform, which seemed like something prisoners would wear, served only to accentuate that weight loss. While the long, white sleeves fitted normally around her slender arms, the light blue shirt over that was huge on her tiny frame, despite the fact that she had grown so much taller in the last year and had now reached 5'8", and the blue trousers hung so loosely around her hips that she had to tie string around the waistband to hold them up.

Ada stared at him with her tired, sunken eyes, waiting for a response.

"Mycroft Holmes." He said, simply.

"What?"

"My name is Mycroft Holmes." He said again.

"Oh," She replied, staring at the floor, "why did it take you sixteen years to tell me that?"

"Well, it's a rather strange name, isn't it?" Mycroft explained.

She nodded, smiling ever so slightly, deep in thought. "What are they doing to me?" Ada continued, looking up at him. This may have been the most worthwhile conversation they'd ever had.

Mycroft leaned forward, placing his elbow on the arm rest of the chair and resting his chin on top of his raised palm. He raised his eyebrows and smiled sadly for a moment, before leaning back again. "I have absolutely no idea."

"Are you going to tell me anything else about why I'm here?"

If the room wasn't bugged he would tell her everything, maybe even tell her that he was going to try to get her out of this hell hole. Mycroft rarely pitied anyone but it was hard not to pity this child who had grown up so miserable and unloved by all. He only hoped that she would work out how to escape (without getting shot) on her own before the emotional damage became permanent.

He raised his eyebrows and smiled sadly at her.

She sighed. "Then can I go now?"

He nodded, and stood up. Ada did the same, and as he always did at the end of their meetings, Mycroft reached out to shake her hand. "It was good to see you as always, Ada. Oh, and, by the way, I have been informed that Professor Moriarty should like to see you soon. Won't that be interesting?"

 _Fuck._

Ada couldn't hide the shock on her face. "Er, how soon, exactly?" She stammered.

"In the next few days, I believe."

That night, instead of sleeping, the children had set up their dormitory for a meeting. Their gatherings were rare, but were a fine display of the sibling-like relationship that had formed between the group. Some of them actually _had_ siblings, though they were never kept in the same part of the compound, and there were never any twins. Growing up in such an awful place had brought this group of teenagers together, and though there were always going to be a few tenuous relationships, they felt like family. The staff treated all of their 'subjects' in the same cold, distant manner. To them, they were nothing more than lab rats, being forced to take part in a seemingly endless experiment that consisted mainly of pain, surgery and, on occasion, watching your friends die.

The children had soon learned, during the first five years of their lives before they were moved up to the second part of the facility that the only love and decency they would ever experience would have to come from each other. They lived in the most unspeakably awful situation and it made them _kind_ , which was why they were now all gathered together, sitting in a circle on the floor and listening to Ada talk about the meeting she had had with the man she finally knew as Mycroft.

Chloe, Ada's best friend, was sitting next to her on the floor with her head in Ada's lap. The room fell silent. Moriarty was a name to which they could place no face. He was a word, a threat, to keep the kids in line.

Oh, you fell behind in class? You didn't score 100% on a test? You didn't follow orders, or didn't want to take part in yet another drugs trial or be the victim of yet another vivisection? Professor Moriarty would find out. He would see your name on a list of misbehaving children (you were never important enough for your name to be mentioned to him directly) and he would organise for you to be killed off. He didn't forgive people, or give them second chances. You weren't important. You were just a name on a list, and if you failed at the only purpose you had in life, which was to aid the research of the scientists at the compound, then you didn't deserve a life at all.

"We can't presume that anything good can come of this. No one who has been sent to see him in the past ever came back." Ada explained.

"Well then what are you going to do? Whatever your plan is, we'll help." Andy, one of the boys, spoke up from the other side of the circle.

"What is there to be done? I mean, escaping from this place is completely impossible. The number of people who have died trying is proof enough." Chloe asked. She looked sad- everyone did.

"No, I won't try to escape like that, it's too obvious. I act on impulse, I always have done. They've probably guessed that I might try something really fucking stupid like escaping a high security compound with over a hundred armed guards and three layers of ten-foot barbed wire electric fencing, so they'll be ready for me if I do."

Ada placed her hands out on the floor behind her and leaned back, holding her arms straight for support, and sighed. In the dark of the dormitory, with only the glow of the dim hallway light outside the door, she looked incredibly ill. Though everyone was quite skinny, Ada was positively skeletal and she had not taken part in any physical training for many weeks. No one ever spoke about how unwell she had become. There was no point in dwelling on something that was out of her control.

"If the opportunity arises I'm going to try to escape, though. Nothing good is going to come of this meeting, but even if this Moriarty guy doesn't plan to kill me, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try. Actually, do you remember when Holly got called in to see him? I swear, when we went out for PE that day, I saw her leave the compound with him. If that happens to me then I could always try then. As soon as I'm past all the fencing I can just...run."

Chloe sat up. "Ada, are you really in a fit state to do any form of exercise right now? How are you going to run away from guards who are constantly in a state of peak physical fitness when you've been told that you're way too weak to even do a jog around the building a couple of times a week?"

Ada rolled her eyes back and sighed once more. "Ugh, I don't know, Chloe, I'm sorry. I guess adrenaline will help. I'm just so fucking tired, I mean, I'm probably gonna die anyway, even if I escape. I have no idea what's causing me to end up like this because it's obviously a nasty side effect of whatever the hell they're doing to me. I really don't care anymore, I just don't want anyone else thinking that they shouldn't try if this happens to them."

There was whispering in the circle, and there was a general feeling that Ada's speech was bringing their little gathering to an end.

"Okay, so, is that it? You're just gonna wing it?" Andy asked. He secretly didn't blame her, given her rapidly deteriorating health.

"Yep. A couple of months ago I'd probably have a complete plan by now but Jesus fucking Christ, I feel like an 80 year old woman. But anyway, who knows? Maybe I'll have some miraculous burst of adrenaline-fuelled energy and manage to escape these people!"

The meeting was over. Ada felt like a coward.

 **A/N: So, what do you think? I have several more chapters written out and I plan to continue writing this for a long time! This whole story has been planned out in my head for weeks. I tried to make it a bit of a break from the norm when it comes to a lot of Sherlock fanfiction. Please rate and review! Thank you!**


	2. Chapter 2

_2 days earlier._

The morning after the dormitory meeting, Chloe woke up a little while before dawn and, wanting to make use of the half hour of privacy they had to speak without listening ears, crept across the room to Ada, gently woke her up, and slipped into her bed, lying next to her under the thin duvet. Chloe wrapped her arms around her best friend and there they lay for a few minutes in a warm, comforting embrace.

In that moment of peace, Ada began to think more about her relationship with Chloe. Was she her best friend? Or was that a label she had picked up in a book somewhere in the hope that it was vaguely accurate? She didn't have the right words with the right context to be able to properly describe her feelings for Chloe. She felt something in her heart, a deep, profound emotion which she, perhaps, would describe as love, if she truly knew what love was. They had a bond which neither of them shared with anyone else, but their sheltered childhood prevented that from being anything other than a strange, unlabelled mess that they could only truly explore in the darkness of the dormitory, away from the prying eyes and strict discipline of the staff in the compound. Until they could both experience the outside world and learn how to interpret their feelings, this bond was doomed to remain as nothing more than a passionate (yet sexually innocent) friendship.

"Chloe?"

Chloe looked up into the other girl's eyes.

"Yes?"

"Thank you. Thank you for being so wonderful to me. Thank you for helping me in the last few weeks while I've been ill. I-you're..." Ada trailed off. She couldn't quite summarise her feelings in the way she had hoped.

Chloe smiled. "It's okay; you don't have to say it. I-I love you, Ada." She said, and she reached up to kiss her on the forehead.

Chloe returned to her own bed, and as dawn broke, they were woken up and sent to the bathrooms to begin their usual morning routine. It was harrowing, knowing that she could spend days, perhaps even weeks waiting for this man to finally meet her and reveal whatever plan he had in store. It certainly wasn't going to be good.

Once they were dressed into their uniforms, they were escorted to the dining hall and queued up outside in absolute silence, and Mrs Tyler, who, every single day without exception, stood at the front of the line and did not move until the whole group had been escorted into the hall, left her position and made her way across to Ada, who watched her approach with an enormous feeling of dread growing in the pit of her stomach.

"Ada, after breakfast you are to report straight to me. Don't join the line."

She didn't even feel scared anymore. She just stared blankly up at the tall, middle aged woman with pinned back gray hair and stern wrinkles around her eyes, and replied "Yes ma'am." In her usual, submissive tone.

She did was she was told, and after breakfast, with one final sad look at Chloe, Ada walked across the dining hall to Mrs Tyler, who then passed her on to one of the guards who usually lined the hall, who then walked her through a several layers of security that she had never before passed, before they reached a door with darkened windows. The guard opened the door without knocking and escorted her inside, before positioning himself in front of the door.

The room was huge, with a polished wooden floor and white painted walls adorned with abstract paintings. Right in the centre was a large meeting room table, and though there were many people seated around it, the only person who drew her attention was the man directly opposite her. He had been watching her as she walked in with a cruel smirk on his face. Even in a room full of people whose job it was to control Ada's life, he felt the most dominating, with his expensive suit and gelled black hair, and while everyone was sitting up straight with notebooks and pens and laptops in front of them, he was leaning back in his seat with his feet up on the table.

"Sit down." Ordered the guard from behind her. She pulled out the chair in front of her from under the table and perched herself awkwardly on the edge of the seat. Ada quickly glanced round the people in front of her. A few of them were the directors of the compound- she had met some of them before, but only a couple of times – some of them were doctors and scientists, many of whom she saw on a daily basis, there was the man she presumed was Moriarty, and the rest were people she had never met before.

"Alright then, let's get down to business. Doctor Flax, if you will." One of the men began the meeting, and a woman from the other side of the table peered down at her notes, and then looked up again to face the rest of the group.

"Well, this is Ada Holmes, our most suitable candidate for the next stage of the experiments. She is sixteen years old and has passed through all stages so far. At this point we have moved her ahead of her peers by already starting to heighten her metabolism into a state of hyper metabolism, hence the weight loss and fatigue, and she is currently in prime condition for our gene therapy and manipulation trials."

 _My surname is Holmes?_

One of the women from the other side of the table asked, "What makes her so much of a suitable candidate? You were practically raving about her earlier."

"Yeah, she looks like a walking corpse right now. How can that be prime condition?" The man next to her spoke up.

"Well, first of all, her current physical state is deliberate, and I know we've lost many people before her, but she doesn't require quite the same level of gene manipulation as the others. Her IQ is the highest of any of the group, before we began speeding up her metabolism she was physically very strong, and should she survive the last stages of the trials, she will be perfect.

Doctor Flax shot one of the other scientists a look. "Doctor Summers?"

He looked up and nodded, and together they stood up and walked across to stand on either side of Ada.

"Stand up." The man on her left ordered. Ada complied.

He pulled some latex gloves out of the pocket of his lab coat and snapped them on. _Oh my god. Oh. My. God._

"Lift up your shirt."

"Oh god, can I please not?" Ada spluttered. She felt panicked and humiliated and when she looked up, she could see Moriarty watching her. He looked amused.

"That's an order." Doctor Flax added sternly from the other side.

She lifted up her shirt, revealing her abdomen. She knew how bad it looked- there were so many old wounds and marks covering her, and some of the larger ones had turned into lumpy and unsightly scars. Some of the younger people around the table, several of whom only seemed to be in their twenties, coughed uncomfortably, and Ada's face blushed red. She was used to this degradation, but not in front of so many new faces, and not in front of someone as menacing as the man sitting opposite her.

Doctor Summers began poking and prodding the scars around her stomach and hips.

"As you can see, she is prone to keloid scarring, so some of her older surgical scars have still not faded. We would usually ignore minor cosmetic complications like these, but the scarring is beginning to make surgery more difficult, and the larger and more widespread the keloid scar, the more restricted her movement is. This definitely doesn't make her any less suitable as a candidate, but we would prefer for some laser treatment and surgical removal to happen first. At this time, these are the only real complications."

There was a sense of finality to his tone, but just before Ada could finally lower her t-shirt, Moriarty finally spoke.

"Turn her around."

She didn't move, and nor did the doctor next to her, who had frozen in the middle of attempting to remove one of his gloves. Ada was unsure of what to do, her eyes flitting between the two men in panic. The whole room had fallen silent.

Doctor Summers cleared his throat. "Y-yes- er, yes. Go on, turn around and show everyone your back."

She turned around and reluctantly lifted her t-shirt once more, and this time, some people actually gasped at the sight before them. Her back was absolutely mutilated- there were scars, cuts, and burns everywhere and some of the wounds were still fresh, and had clearly ripped through old scars.

"I didn't know you were beating the kids, David." Moriarty remarked, looking at the girl's maimed body with a peculiar expression on his face.

"I can assure you that we have always tried to avoid corporal punishment, but Ada here hasn't always been as ...compliant as we would have hoped for someone who has grown up in these conditions, and there reaches a point where much more extreme action must be taken to prevent further defiance." He explained, and while he did so, Ada took the opportunity to lower her shirt and turn around. She didn't care if she wasn't supposed to.

"It doesn't seem like your prevention did anything, David. You've turned her into such an ugly little thing."

"W-well, we have brought in more extreme punishments, but the next stage up from that would have been killing her, and she was far too promising for that." Doctor Summers stammered, and Moriarty nodded a little.

Doctor Flax gestured to her colleague and they both returned to their seats, with Ada following suit. This time, she sat back in her chair, stared at the table and tried not to think the humiliation she had just experienced. The others talked, but she allowed her thoughts to drift until their conversation was blocked out entirely. This was a skill she had managed to perfect over the years, and at this point, now she knew what they had planned for her, she had no interest in listening to them debating on whether or not she should be approved to experience further suffering. It was a relief to know why she had become so ill recently though- the fact that her deteriorating health was deliberate instead of a side effect of an experimental drug was very comforting, and meant that it would probably (hopefully) fix itself if she were to escape.

After a few minutes of daydreaming, Ada could feel eyes on her. She looked up to see Moriarty staring at her again while the others talked, and when their eyes met, he flashed her a sly grin. She looked back down at the table.

"I accept." He said, while everyone else was mid-conversation. They fell silent.

"My car will arrive in ten minutes. We'll take her straight to the facility."

Doctor Flax nodded. "Well then, that's decided."

The room was silent once more, but the atmosphere was much more tense. People were giving each other uncomfortable looks, and they were trying to avoid looking at the teenage girl seated nearby.

Moriarty looked at Ada. "Would you like some hot chocolate?"

"What's hot chocolate?"

There was laughter around the table.

"It's just warm milk and chocolate. Don't worry, you'll like it." He explained, and she could hear the door opening behind her. The guard who had escorted her to the meeting room walked in and placed a mug full of a sweet-smelling brown liquid in front of her. The others were looking at her in anticipation. Ada lifted up the mug and sniffed the drink.

"Hmm. Is that Rohypnol I smell?" She asked, placing it back on the table. "I'm pretty sure that drink is like 90% Rohypnol." Someone sighed.

"Just drink it." Moriarty ordered.

"Is it really necessary to drug me?"

"Drink the fucking drink, girl." Someone else spoke up.

"Why?"

"Who is it I've been told you're always seen with, Ada? Chloe? How's Chloe?" Moriarty asked, smirking suggestively.

She sighed. "Say no more. I'll drink your creepy date-rape hot chocolate."

She picked up the mug and downed the drink in one go, before slamming the cup back onto the glass in front of her. With one last glare at the black-haired menace in front of her, she promptly collapsed, her head landing on the table.

"How,"Doctor Summers asked, "does she know about Rohypnol, if she doesn't even know what hot chocolate is?"


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry, this is only a short chapter! Thank you for reading, and please fav/follow/review!

She woke up with her cheek pressed against something hard and freezing cold. Slowly opening her eyes, Ada realised that she had been leaning her face against a car window, and there was snow piling up on the small rubber ledge outside. With a sharp intake of breath, Ada realised where she was – and who was with her. The man to her left looked up from his phone and allowed her a second to fully wake up. She turned to face him.

"Jim Moriarty. Hi!" He greeted, with a sly smirk. In her sleepy state, Ada couldn't be bothered to control her mouth as she had become used to in the compound.

"Jim? That's a bit of a juxtaposition isn't it? I mean, given your job." She mumbled, turning back to lean her face against the window. The blond guy sitting in the front seat with his feet on the dashboard snorted

"Feet down, Tiger." Jim ordered

They drove for another couple of hours, with the warmth of the car and the last dregs of rohypnol in her bloodstream allowing Ada to drift in and out of sleep. Despite being larger and more expensive than most could afford, the car felt incredibly cramped, and Moriarty's dominating presence could not bother her in her sleep. The next time she woke up, the vehicle was coming to a stop, and out of the window the teenager could see a small building, next to which stood a square cover with 'Esso' written on the front. From what she could remember from their 'Modern Studies' class, this was most likely a petrol station. She couldn't be sure though.

"We're stopping for some chocolate." Moriarty explained. "Want some?"

 _Chocolate? Isn't that a bit childish for someone like him? Then again, what do I know?_

"Erm, no thanks, I've never had it before."

He shrugged and climbed out of the car, and the other man in the front seat followed suit. Ada was left alone in the car with the driver, who left the car to move to where Moriarty had been sitting. It felt like an unnecessary precaution, particularly when he aimed a silenced revolver at her head. She stared at him for a moment, and they made uncertain eye contact, before she looked into the petrol station. There appeared to be quite a queue. The driver seemed to catch on to the pensive look in the girl's eyes, but before he could do anything, it was too late. Ada got the burst of adrenaline she had hoped for.

In a flash, she wacked the guy's outstretched wrist and grabbed the gun, turning it on him. He froze, clearly unprepared for her to be capable of quite this level of self-defence. Ada realised that there was no way she could unlock the car door without letting down her guard, and that man seemed fast. She was left with a moral debate.

Was it wrong for her to kill this man? Life in the compound had not given her the context for anything other than a logical sense of right and wrong, but logic did not always apply to situations like this. He was bad, wasn't he? He was working for an institution that had trapped her in a building in the highlands of Scotland for all sixteen years of her life. That was wrong, wasn't it? And even if she were to shoot him in the leg, he'd still be able to stop her from getting away. There was no time to think, just to act. She shot him in the head.

 _I just killed him. I just killed someone. Oh my god. Oh my god. OH MY GOD._

Despite the ringing in her ears drowning out everything around her, Ada undid her seatbelt, leaned forward, and unlocked the car, before opening the door on her right and sliding out as quietly as possible. As she dragged the body out of the car, Moriarty saw her. She looked up to see him grabbing the blond man next to him.

"Sebastian! GET HER!" he screamed, and just as quickly as Ada had killed the driver, Sebastian grabbed the gun from the pocket and shot her straight in the leg in an attempt at stopping the teenager from escaping. The level of accuracy despite the distance and the thick window between them was astonishing, but there was no time to think about that now. The adrenaline had not left her system, and she was still fast. She slammed the car door shut and opened the one by the driver's seat, before climbing in and starting the engine with the keys that had been left in the ignition.

The children had been taught to drive when they turned fourteen, and they had driven all manner of vehicles. This was not new. She could get away.  
Sebastian had switched his aim to the tires and Ada slammed her foot down on the pedal, swerving the car away as fast as she could. The bullet ricocheted off of the door. Glancing back one more time at the look of the most extreme fury she had ever seen on Moriarty's face, she swerved off into the distance. Behind her, she could hear bullets and the final screams of the ordinary people who had witnessed her escape. Ada kept driving.

 _The present._

Ada had been in the hospital for five days, although she had only been awake for two of them, and it was finally time for her to be discharged. Though she was weak, particularly from the bullet wound in her leg, and was going to be on crutches for a few weeks, she felt positive. An hour ago, Mycroft had sent someone to help Ada to choose out some clothes from the many bags they had brought with them, and she had settled with a simple pair of jeans, some plimsolls, and a large knitted sweater over a grey t-shirt. It was the first time she had ever worn any clothes other than her uniform, and it was an odd experience. She picked at the sleeve of her jumper nervously.

There were footsteps in the hall, and Ada looked up to see Mycroft walk in. He smiled at her. "Hello Ada, are you ready to go?"

She nodded, and dropped down off the bed to slip her shoes on. Ever since she had woken up, everyone had noted how quiet she had been, and no one, not even Mycroft, could tell whether or not that was normal, because none of them had a clue how she had managed to reach Baker Street on her own with such a serious wound and such little understanding of the world. She hadn't felt ready to talk about it yet, and it didn't seem like a good idea to push it.

Walking through the hospital, though awkward with the crutches, was surreal. While she had been making her way to London, Ada had not been in a state to really pay attention to her surroundings, but now she was able to pay attention to her surroundings, and everything felt different. When they got into the car, she spent the whole journey staring out of the window, craning her neck so that she could see absolutely everything. To anyone else, the busy streets were a normal, mundane part of life, but to Ada they were alive with freedom and energy and purpose, and she loved it. After a while, they finally reached a street she recognised. The car slowed down until they reached a stop outside the block of flats behind which she had originally collapsed. She climbed out of the car, grabbing her crutches from the seat behind her, and allowed Mycroft to escort her up to the front door. He attempted a reassuring smile as he reached up for the knocker.

It opened almost instantly, as though there had been someone on the other side waiting for the pair to arrive. Stood in front of them was a very friendly, bubbly old woman who practically dragged them both inside, already excitedly offering up tea and biscuits and a full English breakfast.

"Ada, this is Mrs Hudson, the landlady." Mycroft explained.

"How do you like your tea dear?" Mrs Hudson asked her cheerily whilst she pottered around her kitchen, teabags in hand.

"Um, I've only had tea a couple of times, but milk and sugar sounds nice? Thanks."

The landlady gave her an incredibly pitying look upon hearing that she had only drunk tea a couple of times in her life, and put the kettle on to boil. Ada took the opportunity to discretely look around the kitchen and enjoy the feeling of being somewhere so _colourful._ She was used to white walls and floors and desks and beds and duvets and everything, but this room felt warm and calm and cosy, like a home instead of a hospital, and Ada never wanted to leave.

"How about I show you where you'll be staying, Ada?" Mycroft directed, and she nodded.

"I'll bring your tea up for you when it's ready, dearies." Mrs Hudson piped up, and with a polite smile, Mycroft guided the teenager out of the kitchen and up the stairs to flat 221B. As they got higher and higher, she became filled with burning curiosity, but also a strong sense of dread. Since she had woken up in the hospital, the matter of Sherlock Holmes and exactly why she had headed straight to the 221B Baker Street upon her escape had not exactly been approached, but the fact that she had been brought back there felt reassuring. It meant that she had not journeyed for two days with a bleeding bullet wound in her leg for no reason.

They door to the flat was open, and sitting on the sofa in front of them was Sherlock Holmes himself. He looked up at Ada and smiled slightly, and suddenly, she realised exactly _how_ right she was about the connection between herself and this mysterious detective, and as amazing as it was, it was also absolutely awful.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Hello! Sorry I have taken so long to update. This was sort of an awkward chapter and I had no idea how to write it, so sorry if it's a bit shit, but don't worry, I have the whole plot planned out in my head now. It's just a matter of actually getting it written down, and I plan to actually update weekly from now on. Please fav/follow/review!**

Ada was no idiot. The Holmes brothers knew that from the start, which is why they chose not to dance around the subject of how she had ended up spending her formative years in such dire circumstances. It was a relief, really, to be told the full story straight away. Although she had gathered much of it already through simply putting two and two together, she had worried that they would decide to give her time to recover and settle into society before they explained everything.

"When I was eighteen years old, I fell in love with a fellow student at university. Before then, I never believed that I was capable of loving someone in such a way, but she proved me wrong. Within a year, she fell pregnant. It wasn't planned, obviously, but your mother wanted to keep it, and with the support of our parents, we did. For nine months, everything was fine. Alex had no problems with the pregnancy, and we found a decent place to live. Then, half way through childbirth, she had a massive haemorrhage, and suddenly, she was gone, and in that moment, all the changes she had made in me, all of her influence, it died too- right there in that hospital bed. I felt alone again. And god, you were so beautiful, but I couldn't raise a child- I could barely look after myself before Alex came along. And then, two days after your birth, while we were deciding what to do, Mycroft received an offer regarding your upbringing from a man named James Moriarty. He informed us that if, in return, he would receive a few favours from Mycroft, he was willing to have you brought up in what he claimed was a secure, loving environment. We knew you would grow up in a facility in Scotland, yes, but as far as we were aware, you would not necessarily be locked away. You would have access to the outside world, and you would be surrounded by trained and caring adults and other children who were in the same situation as you. Though not ideal, it seemed better than to leave you in the hands of the country's mediocre care system to be thrown around. He agreed to allow Mycroft a yearly visit on your birthday, and to send me yearly pictures of you and updates about your progress in the facility. During the first five or six years, we believed we had made the right decision. You appeared to be happy and healthy and well cared for, and Mycroft always seemed positive when he returned from his visits, but then, as you already know, things appeared to go downhill after that. I begged him, I really did, I begged him to get you out of there, but there was nothing he could do. Moriarty grew more powerful than we ever imagined, and I realised there was nothing we could do except hope that you could escape on your own. It has haunted me ever since."

They were silent. Sherlock waited for his daughter to respond, spending the time examining her face, feeling a familiar stab of pain in his heart as he realised just how much she looked like her mother.

"Erm, well, I don't really know how I'm supposed to respond in this kind of situation." She stammered, trying to hold back the tears that were threatening to cloud her vision.

"There is no right or wrong way. Just say how you feel." Mycroft interjected. He always seemed to be so calm.

"Well, I guess I feel sad about my mother. I had sorted of guessed that she was already dead when I worked out who you were," she said, gesturing to Sherlock.

"And I feel relieved knowing that you regret sending me there, because hopefully it means I won't go back. And part of me feels let down that you didn't choose to bring me up yourself, but at the same time, I think it tells me a lot about what kind of a person you are, because you thought you were doing what was best for me, which is good. I think I just need time, though, to get used to everything."

Sherlock nodded, and decided that now all the boring explanation stuff was over, he could grill Ada on her escape, because he was, really, incredibly impressed.

"So, Ada, how did you escape in the end? It was remarkably sudden."

While his daughter recounted her actions throughout the last forty eight hours, Sherlock smiled to himself, because, despite their complete separation, Ada had ended up being just like her mother, and it was wonderful.

oOoOoOo

Six weeks. Six weeks until the flat below her father's would be ready. Six weeks until she'd stop finding body parts in the fridge and being woken up at three in the morning to the sound of her father's violin playing. Though Ada loved being free, she really, really missed being able to get a solid ten hours sleep a night, and having daily access to milk which wasn't several weeks out of date.

John, it turned out, was much nicer than the newspaper had made him seen. When she escaped, Ada had managed to steal a newspaper from a newsagents in the outskirts of London after spotting its headline about Sherlock Holmes through the window. She realised, at the time, that Sherlock could be helpful in one of two ways: his strange first name and his surname seemed highly likely to link him to Mycroft Holmes, and perhaps even to herself, given her discoveries during the meeting, or, his position as a 'consulting detective' may also prove useful in working out the true intention of the facility from which she had just fled. In this article, the journalist had made John seem a little cold, and grumpy, when in fact he had been incredibly warm to his flatmate's daughter, and was doing everything he could to help her adjust. He even showed her how to use a toaster!

Sherlock, on the other hand, was just as the newspaper had described him- arrogant and unconventional. Ada quite liked it though- life seemed much more exciting when she was around her father.

The day before her new flat was to be unveiled to her, and she could finally live independently on the weekly allowance which her uncle planned to send, Ada found herself fresh out of the shower, staring at her reflection in the floor length mirror in her temporary bedroom. In the compound she only ever caught sight of her reflection in windows or in a small mirror for a short moment after she had her yearly haircut. Since her arrival to Baker Street she had avoided looking into that mirrror, but now she could not help herself.

She had put on weight, which was good, but otherwise she still retained that tired, glassy look in her eyes. She was still covered in those horrible, disfiguring scars, and she still just looked so...hollow. Like a skeleton of the healthy, happy teenager she could have been if her mother hadn't died. But, instead of letting all of that anger and sorrow eat away at her as she stared into her reflection, Ada walked away.


End file.
